


giving up

by penguinsledding



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 12:17:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penguinsledding/pseuds/penguinsledding
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Aang's time finally comes, Katara refuses to accept it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	giving up

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my Tumblr; this fic was my quick little way of getting out a long-held onto headcanon.

The snow falls heavily in Republic City that night.

Thick, cottony flakes do more than merely drift through the air- they pound, coating the ground in their harsh cold. Katara can’t see more than a foot in front of her. Even her waterbending doesn’t do much- the dense fog is a force to be reckoned with, and the howling wind too. It licks at her ears and reminds her of her guilt, the heavy burden housed in her stomach.

Her husband lays ill in bed, his last days speeding towards him, but she imagines that it is him who sent the streams of air. She imagines that he sent them to lure her back.

The imagined strategy isn’t likely to succeed - she has been with him for upwards of sixty years, and she will not lose him now.

Still, her old bones weigh her down. She wonders how he will feel when he wakes up without her- wonders if he will feel betrayed.

She shakes the thoughts away. He has Kya with him, and she’s an excellent healer. Kya, and his sons, and the Air Acolytes. He will know where she has gone, and he will be hurt, but she’ll deal with that later. She prays that he will have the time to be angry with her.

The North Pole is a long journey by boat, and a longer one by foot. She’s not planning on either- Appa will meet her soon, she knows it. His fur is tinted grey now, and his joints creak just as often as hers, but neither of them will let him die. They’ll do anything.

She squeezes her eyes shut tightly, fighting back tears. It’s been months now, months of desperately attempting to prolong his life only to watch him grow more and more decrepit. She feels him slipping away. His eyes, always vibrant, always loving, are growing dimmer. His hold on her is looser. She can’t help but clutch him tighter in return.

The Spirit Oasis is her last hope. She has brought him back once; she can do it again.

Still, doubt lingers in the back of her mind, clawing at the flesh there, holding her where she is weak- what if he is right, what if there’s nothing they can do? What if this quest will only waste time she could’ve spent with him?

She will try anyway.

-

It isn’t long before he catches up with her.

He is limping heavily, hastily bundled in a blanket. She knows when he is near her, can sense his presence after decades of marriage, but it is only when he coughs that she turns around. Horrified, she watches as he pulls his gloved hand away from his mouth; it is stained with blood.

“Sweetie…” her voice is soft, and she reaches for him, moves to take him into her arms and cradle him. He may stand a head taller than her even when stooped, and his jaw may be strong, his brow determined, but she can only see the ghost that is soon to be. She wonders if her arms could hold his spirit, if she could stop the world from stealing it away and giving it to another. She knows, even now, that the next body will not deserve him.

“Come home.” His voice is hoarse, broken, begging. It fortifies her resolve- she misses the warm lilt, the laughter that always underscored his words.

“No.”

“There’s nothing left for us to do.”

“No.” Her voice cracks now- she is begging too. Begging for his life, begging for a chance. She has loved him forever, and she has never known how to let go. 

“My time is running out. I’ve been dreaming of her.”

The air is silent but for the sound of the snow and the wind, the flakes still falling, wind still howling. Aang is shaking visibly; she does touch him now, leaning in and wrapping her arms carefully around his waist. She buries her head in his chest, and his head disappears into her hair. Movements normally as natural as breathing make her chest ache. She knows that they are numbered.

He explains, although she didn’t dare ask.

“The next Avatar. It’ll be her time soon.”

Katara’s tears mar his tunic. His drip onto her hair.

“She needs to wait. Needs to wait until we’re ready, until your time is over.”

“My time is borrowed,” he says. The words ring true in the freezing air. Katara remembers his weight in her arms when she first found him, fresh out of the iceberg, remembers the crushing grief when she thought she had lost him that night in Ba Sing Se. She wants to ask him to borrow more, wants to ask him to stay, but her tongue is too heavy to speak. “I need you to let go.”

She has never heard anything stranger in her life, never heard anything more impossible. 

“Never.”

His chest rumbles slightly, an almost-cough tumbling from his lips, and she wonders if he is trying to laugh. Her eyes burn.

“You’re still my forever girl, right?”

She nods violently, and he holds her tighter.

“Then please, stay with me. Give up with me. Let go.”

It has been months of fighting, months of begging, moaning, and pleading, and for once, she allows herself to break down. For once, she listens.

They return home that night.


End file.
